There are numerous known applications in which a primary control server operates to control a plurality of secondary data servers. In some known applications, enormous amounts of data are captured by the secondary data servers, and at some point need to be purged. In these known applications, some amount of application downtime is needed during routine maintenance so that data can be purged from the secondary data servers. The amount of downtime needed during routine maintenance is specific to the particular application.
A check processing system is one known type of application in which enormous amounts of data are captured by the secondary data servers, and therefore subsequently need to be purged. The data purging process requires the entire check processing system to be taken offline for some period of time. During this downtime, a financial institution (such as a bank) running the check processing system cannot process any financial transaction. Financial transactions to be processed will form a queue until the data purging process has been completed, and the check processing system goes back online and becomes available again to process financial transactions.
A check processing system is an example of a mission-critical application in which a goal is to have system availability to as near 100% of the time as possible. A check processing system is also an example of a complex application in which the primary control server provides many global controls over the secondary data servers, and in which there is much workflow and other complicated interactions between the secondary data servers themselves. Such complexity makes it difficult to purge data from the secondary data servers without having to take the check processing system offline for at least some period of time. It would be desirable to provide methods of managing loads on secondary data servers of mission-critical applications (such as check processing systems) so that routine maintenance (such as purging of data from secondary data servers) can be performed without having to take these systems offline at all.